Dangers of Everyday Life

I wrote this set of linked stories in the 1980s, focusing on the anxieties of middle age and family life. Why publish them now? I've harbored a parental affection for the characters; they deserve to be brought into the light of the world. Consider Vince Delaney, for example, who has a wife and five cats and the biography of Rousseau he'll never finish writing, as he calculates his venial sins. Anna Cox once yearned to follow Joni Mitchell's footsteps to the Mermaid Tavern on the coast of Crete but remains landlocked in North Carolina as an aerobics instructor. Charles Weber, the editor of The Almanac of Has-Beens, feels abandoned as his daughter departs for college.